Version History

Since late 2012 when Don't Starve became available to the public, there have been periodical updates, which introduce new content, fix glitches, or balance the game. The final major update before the game's official release on the PlayStation 4 was in October 2013, after which all updates focus on bugfixes and performance. The player must download the latest patch before playing the game.

- [Bug #1295] on screen controls don't store controller id between updates to ensure that they are always displaying the correct control tips

Put an upper limit on the number of birds Wickerbottom can spawn at once to avoid out of memory birdameggedon

Hide the crafting menu when using the pause inventory

- [Bug #1292] World clock is only advanced to the player's age when entering or leaving caves, not after travelling with the teleportato

- Additionally the player's age is reset to 0 when entering a world with an age of 0 when not ascending/descending, otherwise the next ascend/descend will advance the world to the previous age value

Put a cap on map zoom-out

Fix customization screen override loading

Fix for minimap not clearing properly.

November 14, 2013 - Bugfix / Performance update

Gameplay fixes

Add naughtiness to smallish tallbird

Shadow Puppets scare rabbits

Wilson is invincible while sleeping

Fix recipe prototyping to work with new tech level splits

Fix for Winter is generated in spite of the 'Season' preset setting being set to 'Only Summer'. in the 'World Menu'

Fix for Wolfgang saying how mighty he is and totally ruining everything in the intro NIS

Make Telelocator Staff check for water when teleporting randomly

Prevent infinite loot fountain from beaver-gnawed spiky tree

Stumps can now be lit on fire after loading.

Stumps now propagate fire.

Fix for placing structures after eating a glow fruit

Fix maxwell mine visibility

Heat Stones work in backpacks

Instead of clearing followers from saveindex on load which can result in them being lost, clear followers on any save that is not an ascend/descend

Fix crash when lureplants eat bees

Now reset the color cube on load to deal with loading and saving between insane and non insane games.

Made Evergreens and cave entrances non-clickable when they are first worked to stop you from interacting with them by accident

Planted Pine Cone has different name from unplanted

Abigail is now tagged as a "character", additionally the tentacle will retaliate against anything in range that is attacking it

Lantern swap bug fix

Lantern can't be turned on in pocket

Killing a Baby Beefalo is very naughty

Made a "SelfStacker" component and added it to the houndstooth, monster meat and spoiledfood to improve base clenliness and performance in very long games

Rubble no longer crashes

Armor will always return 0 damage if the absorb percent is >= 1.

There is now only one "Sinkhole" room per task. This will remove the case of regularly seeing two cave entrances near each other.

Made "characterspecific.lua" a component for items that are only supposed to be on one character. Added it to all character specific items.

Fix bug where nightmare stuff was getting turned on in second overworlds

Fix for occasional cave gen fail

Fix for Wes talking

Walrus blow dart is no longer targetable/inspectable during flight

Fix for two bugs: Leif not exiting frozen once hit and minotaur being stunlockable.

Made Beefalo manure in the old way, and fixed a problem with their babies never showing up

Catcher now makes sure the projectile it's tracking is valid before attempting to preform functions with it.

Combat function now ensures that the entity it's on is still around before calling GetDistSqToInst.

Ham Bat no longer loses durability from being used, but does spoil over time

Ham Bat and flower hat both display spoilage graphics instead of text percentages in order to reflect that they are spoiling over time

Fixed occasional invisible Maxwell intro bug

Properly report farm plot fertilization success

Make the build placers opaque so that they show up better

Make burnt Trees more visible when they are highlighted

Deerclops will knock down anything he collides with that is tagged "tree", allowing him to pass through.

Divining Rod will not disappear when attacking.

Made Ham Bat non-edible to avoid interface confusion. Gave it higher damage to compensate.

Garland is not edible to reduce interface confusion

Make dusk announcement more generic, so that it doesn't mention fire.

Inventory items that also have brains will now hibernate while they are held by an owner.

Bees no should no longer buzz while in a container.

Fix for mandrake crash when travelling between cave levels.

Use consistent language for the settings screen in FE and pause menu

Fix for inventory items getting into a bad state when you try to put them into an already-full chester

Birds can no longer be killed while flying away.

Shadow Creatures will not trigger tooth traps.

Fix woodie, chester contents, and beard issues when time catches up when leaving / entering caves

Fix for dropping equippable tools under full-container conditions

Maxwell's Shadows will now die when he does.

Fix Bee spawn schedule

Controller stuff

Added a controller debug menu

Improved attack/interaction picker

Added vibration (it can be toggled off)

Added controller hints to the front end screens and made them more consoleish when a controller is attached

When using dpad to use un-equipped item on the scene, it will now be equipped if required

Fix for item-on-item interactions with controller

Fix "for science!" button controller focus when you beat the game

Inventory hint stays up longer

Added trigger tooltips to inventory and crafting bars

Controller tips for inventory and container items are at more sensible offsets

Add louder controller focus change sound

Added repeat rate for controller page/value changes

Hooked up sounds to page flips

Don't play scrolling sounds after the ends of the crafting menu

When using a controller pressing the "INVENTORY_USEONSELF" bind will now first toggle deployable mode on (if applicable) a 2nd press will execute any action related to the bind if deployable mode was triggered.

Keep the crafting menu open as you open and close the map

Make controller scrolling move a page at a time in the character select screen

Changed the sense of the rotation buttons to be more logical

Controller focus movement in FE has repeat when held

Use the correct string (based on type, not index) to name the controller you're configuring on the controls screen

Added default PS3 controller bindings on OSX

Added various missing control bindings across platforms

Split ui focus controls from movement

Split prev/next controls from prev/next page, bound to spinner

Controls screen listens for pgup/pgdown, scrolls by half-screens so you can see some paired controls better

Mods which overwrite core game assets have usually crashed the game unless the game is restarted once. Now a mod can specify this to force the game to restart when the mod is loaded.

Mods can now specify an arbitrary save slot instead of using slots 1-4. This is useful for 'game mode' mods which don't sit nicely on top of an existing Don't Starve save.

Assets:

Road textures can now be overwritten by a mod.

World Gen:

Can now specify the range of background nodes to generate for each node in the level definition.

Tasks with blockers can now specify what their "blank" nodes are in case you don't want it to be ocean.

Tasks have a little more control over internal connectedness by specifying a custom crosslink factor for rooms, and whether or not the rooms are generated in a loop.

Development:

AddGameDebugKey and AddGlobalDebugKey are now global functions, so mods can utilise them for testing.

Better logging when animations and builds are missing.

Sublime Text, a great script editor, is now packaged with the mod tools in Steam! Use this when working with Lua files for syntax highlighting, multi-file search, and other handy editing tricks.

October 1, 2013 - Six Feet Under

Modding

Required setpieces and prefabs are now specified in level files instead of being hardcoded in world gen. This means you no longer have to have teleportatos in your custom levels. Check out "ordered_story_setpieces" and "required_prefabs" in scripts/maps/levels/survival.lua to see how we are using this for our own maps.

Fire darts can now target non-burnable creatures, but will not do damage. You can use them to thaw frozen creatures.

Controls

Controller support added! A few screens and objects still need to be implemented, but the game is mostly playable with a controller. Expect to see improvements in controller functionality within the next update.

Controls can now be modified from the Pause menu, rather than needing to quit to the main menu.

Bug Fixes

Wilson no longer says "It's getting late, I should make a fire" while in the caves.

Wilson will no longer say "It's too bright out." when attempting to use a sleeping item in the caves during the day time.

Added pig heads on sticks in merm-land, merm heads on sticks in pig-land

Added titles at the start of adventure mode

Some resource types will randomly swap out in adventure mode levels

Wormholes are now much more common.

Bug Fixes:

Some optimization work for worlds with lots of entities

Entity culling works properly with gigantic resolutions

Mushrooms don't re-grow in winter

Bugs:

Tools and weapons can't be placed in containers by drag&drop over containers, they can only be placed directly into containers' slots.

March 26, 2013 - Doorway to Adventure

New Features

Adventure mode is now integrated into survival mode. In a survival mode level, you can find a special portal that will take you to the start of adventure mode. If you die in adventure mode, you will wake up back in your survival level, outside of the portal. From there you can try again (restarting at level 1, of course). Dying in survival mode is still perma-death-fatal, and retrying a survival level will always generate a new one for you. Any existing saves that you might have from previous patches will be interpreted as survival levels - you should be able to teleport out of them to get access to the new features.

New front-end screens for dealing with the save slots and the new game flow.

The adventure levels have been re-done to better match what their final structure will be. They’re still a bit rough around the edges, but you can start to see the overall sweep of the game now. Please see the detailed descriptions at the end of the change list.

Fix apparent duplicate item when dropping item on the ground and then into your backpack before the drop happens

Fix infinite bees spawning from beebox by repeatedly saving/loading game

When murdering an entire stack of helpless creatures in your inventory, loot is gained for each individual, not just once

Waking up sleeping hunting hounds at night will rouse the walruses from their slumber

Fixed a bug where you could use a sleeping bag or tent during the transition from night to day to skip an entire day.

Level Descriptions: The adventure levels are still being worked on and refined, but here's an idea of where the are right now and where we want them to be.

Level 1:

Near-constant rain and frequent short winters take a toll on your sanity and your fires. You must survive in these more extreme conditions as you hunt for the teleportato pieces. When complete, this level should feel similar to a survival level, but with increased pressure on all your resources.

Level 2:

This level is smaller and shorter than the previous level, but it is permanently winter! The aim is to survive the cold without any preparation time. When complete, this level should keep you moving quickly.

Level 3:

The level features a resource-rich central island, surrounded by dangerous lands containing each of the teleportato pieces. Right now it's still fairly lush, but eventually the outlying islands should be quite inhospitable!

Level 4:

Use the first land to stock up. Once you pass through the dying wormhole, you'll need everything you've got to survive. We're currently still working on the balance between the two lands.

Level 5:

This level should put your survival skills to the ultimate test, not only will there be harsh weather and tough monsters, but resources will be extremely scarce. Eventually. Right now it's just been roughed in, but it's still got lots of badguys in it!

Health and Sanity effects of foods have been reduced (you restore these by other means now)

Monster meat perishes faster

Some fuels like ropes or dug plants burning time has been reduced

Blow dart causes more damage

Graves have gems, gears, and nightmare fuel in them sometimes

Bug fixes

You can kill small creatures directly in your inventory / toss them into fires

Season onsets work better in adventure mode

AOE attacks cause area damage even if the targeted hit misses

Deerclops can not be stunlocked, and doesn’t panic when he is lit on fire

Koalefants can no longer fly across water when you aren’t watching

Koalefant tracks point more accurately in the correct direction

Attempting to store a weapon in Chester no longer attacks him

Chester follows through wormholes when using a backpack

Right click an equipped tool with another item no longer destroys the tool

When wilson uses up a tool, he automatically equips a replacement if one is available

You can no longer light Beefalo (or other creatures) on fire by using a torch on them

Mandrakes get picked up properly when using Spacebar

February 26, 2013 - A Winter's Tale

Winter

Winter comes every 20 days or so, with snow and a new audio landscape. Ambient air temperature is modelled, and your character will get colder the longer he/she stays out in the open. Getting too cold for too long will cause freezing damage. You can extend your time away from the fire by wearing warm clothing. Nights are longer, and vegetation does not replenish. Bees and butterflies don’t leave their houses in the winter.

Improved Mod Support

There is a new mod API that should make mods break less when we update, and allows multiple mods to work at the same time. Here is some documentation on how to create a mod. Language packs are now actually supported. We supply a strings.pot template file with every update, and the game can load .po language files. This should make maintaining translations a lot easier, and you can use industry-standard tools. For more info, see here.

New creatures:

Mactusk N' Son - Sets up camp in an igloo with his Son, and then hunt you with blowdarts and hounds.

Deerclops - He’s big, he likes to smash stuff, and he’s really hard to kill. You should probably just run away.

Sandbox Mode (continued) Added a new world creation screen. There are only a couple of options enabled currently, but soon you will be able to unlock more!

Sanity tuning From our testing, we determined that sanity was coming on too early for new players, but was also easily avoidable by established players. The intention is for sanity to be a long-term lurking danger, so this was the complete opposite of what we were going for. Here are some changes to help rectify this:

February 29, 2013 - Hotfix

New Character: Wes - Do you think Don’t Starve is too easy? Try playing as Wes, the mime! He’s not good at doing anything!

Sanity - The player character loses sanity when he is left alone in the dark, gets close to scary monsters, or does crazy things like eating monster meat or jumping through a Worm Hole. Sanity can be regained through acts of dapperness, like wearing fancy clothes in the sunshine and eating candy.
Low sanity is not fatal, but strange creatures from another time and place are attracted to madness. There are new, powerful items that can be built from the Nightmare Fuel that they leave behind when killed.

Save Slots - You can have up to four save games at once now. Your existing save will be imported into the first slot when you start the game for the first time.

Sandbox Mode - This is the game as you all know it. There will eventually be a customization screen before you start a level, but you just get the default generation for now.

Experimental Adventure Mode - When you start a new game, you can choose to play in adventure (i.e. story) mode. Currently, there are five levels of difficulty as you progress through the levels. This is an early test, so we have a lot of work to do to make these levels meaningful and fun. We also need to add the story’s ending. This is for experienced DS players who want a taste of the future.

Pathfinding - Monsters and followers can navigate around corners and walls.

Mod Support (steam only)- Modding is now allowed! We’re distributing the source scripts with the game, so have a look in data/scripts, and see what you can do. There is an example (machine-translated) French language pack included with the game to get you started. See the modding forum for more details.

There is a way for non-Wilson characters to find beard hairs in the wild.

Sometimes, when you find pig villages, they will have carrot and flower farms.

Lots of small, under-the-hood changes to the world gen.

Seeds provide less hunger.

Birds drop a feather -or- a morsel, never both.

Rabbits take longer to respawn.

Hounds drop teeth less often.

Traps and Toothtraps have slightly fewer uses.

Farms take a bit longer to grow.

Birds won’t land on seeds if you are standing too close to them.

Spider dens spit out less creep.

Creep without a spider den disappears. (As a side-effect, creep can no longer be picked up and placed.)

Walls have more health.

Torches cost more to build, but last longer.

Corpses are back!

Bug Fixes:

There is much less mist in the graveyards, since it was causing performance and visibility problems.

Stuff that falls near the ocean shouldn’t disappear.

Stone walls don’t take fire damage.

Hounds don’t follow you through the teleportato.

You can’t be killed while you are using the teleportato.

Stumps no longer rain from the sky on loading some games.

Rabbits no longer phase through obstacles.

Placers for campfires won’t disappear into the night when trying to build them.

Heated beefalo won’t go out of their way to aggro walls.

Spider queens no longer give birth to unlimited spiders when they have a combat target.

Deprecations: The old world gen and the old research system have been removed. If you have an existing save game that was using the old research system, you will have to build some science machines to unlock your recipes.

February 13, 2013 - Hotfix

New item:

Garland - a pretty hat made out of flowers that gives a small sanity buff until it rots away

You can escape the world by finding Wooden Thing and activating it. You get to keep your inventory, and you cash-out any XP that you have and unlock characters without dying. This is the first step towards story mode. The world that you escape to is no harder than the first, but this will change soon!

New Research Method: Under the new research method, you unlock access to tiers of recipes by building research machines. You can unlock a specific recipe by building it near an active machine, after which point you can build it anywhere. Your known recipes last as long as you do - they will travel with you to new worlds if you escape, but you will lose them if you die. There are no more research points or grinding. The science machine is now a bit cheaper to make, and the alchemy engine is a bit more expensive.

This is a big change, so we've made it optional for the time being. When you start a new world, you will get to choose between the new research method or the old one. Your progress in the old method is not available in the new method, but will be there if you switch back. We will be phasing out the old method soon, but wanted to introduce the new one carefully.

New Character: Wickerbottom The Librarian can be unlocked with XP. She gets a bonus research tier, because she is so smart.

New Creatures:

There are Baby Beefalo. You can eat them, if you are a terrible person.

Worm Holes are sprinkled throughout new worlds. I dare you to click on one!

Koalefant, an elusive herbivore that you can hunt. He is hard to find, and harder to catch. He drops Koalefant Trunk and lots of meat.

New Craftables:

You can build three types of defensive Walls (Hay Walls, Wood Walls, and Stone Walls). These can be destroyed by monsters, and repaired by you. The AI pathfinding is not done yet but will probably go in the next update, so enjoy confusing the heck out of pigmen while you can.

You can make wooden floor tiles and place them like turf.

You can make a Boomerang and throw it at other creatures. Just be careful when it flies back at you!

You can build a Pitchfork, which takes over turfing duties from the shovel.

Spider dens have a full life cycle. Tiers are more meaningful, and higher tiered dens will require strategy to overcome.

Spider queens come out of the highest-tier nests to wreak havoc and spread spideryness.

A new type of warrior spider protects high-level dens and the queen. They are resistant to kiting, so a frontal assault is not recommended.

Wilson can build fire darts, and light pretty much every creature on fire.

Wilson can build a spider hat from egg sacks that lets him control spiders. Just be careful when you take it off!

Wilson can build tooth traps and use them for defense or for guilt-free rabbit hunting.

There is a new, experimental map gen algorithm that you can use. It is a work in progress and is largely untested and unbalanced, so you may not live for very long! (Don’t worry, though - the old map gen is still the default!)